Shields of Pride

by Elizabeth Chadwick

Genres: Historical Fiction; International Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

The year is 1173. King Henry's efforts to crush his rebellious sons ignite bloody border skirmishes throughout the land. Yet it is a time of triumph for mercenary Josceline de Gael, bastard son of the king's most trusted ally. Victorious on the battlefield, de Gael suffers sweet defeat when his heart is conquered by the lovely Linnet de Montsorrel. But their love will find its greatest challenge as the torments of jealousy, suspicion, pride - and an enemy from beyond the grave - threaten all they hold dear.

Release date: August 6, 2009

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 368

Sample

An assortment of knights and men-at-arms surrounded the wain like witnesses clustering around a fresh corpse while a crouched man examined a damaged wheel. His cloak was trimmed with sable, his boots were of red leather and the horse his squire held was clean-limbed and glossy. A handful of women huddled together, anonymous in mantles and hoods, and watched the men from beneath the dubious shelter of an ash tree overhanging the road.

Dismounting, Joscelin tossed his reins to his own squire and approached the crippled wain. The soldiers stiffened, hands descending to sword-hilts and fingers tightening upon spear-shafts. The crouching man stood up and his gaze narrowed as he recognized Joscelin.

Joscelin eyed Giles de Montsorrel with similar disfavour. The baron was distantly related to the Earl of Leicester and thus considered himself a man of high standing. He viewed Joscelin, the bastard of a warrior who had carved his own nobility by the sword, as dung beneath his boots. They had encountered each other occasionally on the French tourney circuits but no amity had sprung from these meetings, Montsorrel not being the kind to forgive being bowled from the saddle on the end of a blunted jousting lance.

Forced by circumstance to be civil, Montsorrel gave Joscelin an icy nod which Joscelin returned in the same spirit before fixing his attention on the broken wheel. Not just broken, he could see now, but with a hopelessly shattered rim. ‘You haven’t a chance in hell of cobbling a repair here,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to hire another cart from the nearest village.’ He walked slowly around the stricken wain, examining it from all angles before halting in front of the three sturdy cobs still harnessed in line between the shafts. ‘How much weight do you carry?’

‘None of your business!’ Montsorrel snapped.

‘Oh, but it is,’ Joscelin said. ‘I cannot bring my own wain past while yours is obstructing the road. If it’s not too heavy, I’d be more than willing to help you drag it to one side.’

Montsorrel glared. ‘You think I’m going to stand aside for hired scum like you?’

Joscelin thumbed the side of his jaw. Suddenly he was very aware of the pressure of his sword-hilt against his hip. ‘Hired scum?’ he repeated softly.

One of the women murmured to her companions and, detaching herself from their group, stepped forward to place herself between the two men. She faced Joscelin, forcing him to divert his attention from Montsorrel. She had delicate features and unfathomable grey-blue eyes that held his for a moment before she turned to indicate the broken wain.

‘Messire, by the time we have found a wheelwright or hired another cart, the city gates will have closed for the night.’ She hesitated. ‘Forgive me, but I notice your own wain is larger than ours and but lightly laden. I am sure if you lent it to us of a kindness, my husband would compensate you for your inconvenience.’

Joscelin stared at her in surprise. He was accustomed to being propositioned by women but in different social circumstances and for different reasons, it had to be said, and never in front of their husbands. She looked down, a flush brightening her cheekbones. The rain continued to fall in a steady, cloth-soaking drizzle.

‘Linnet!’ Montsorrel’s anger diverted from Joscelin to his wife. ‘Do you dare to interfere?’

She flinched, but her voice was steady as she turned to him. ‘I was thinking of your son, my lord. He must not catch a chill.’

Montsorrel cast an irritated glare in the direction of the other women. Joscelin looked, too. One of the bundled figures under the tree was a small child. A little hand was held in the grasp of a nursemaid and Joscelin received the impression of wide, frightened eyes and a snub nose set in a small, wan face. Amid anger at finding himself trapped because he could not for shame refuse the woman, he felt a thread of pity for the infant.

Montsorrel said stiffly to Joscelin, ‘Very well, you’re a mercenary. I’ll pay you the rate to deliver the goods to my house.’

Joscelin bit back the urge to retort that he was not so much of a mercenary that he would allow the likes of Giles de Montsorrel to buy his obedience. ‘I’ll not serve you,’ he said derisively, ‘but your lady did speak of compensation. Perhaps we can reach an agreement.’

Montsorrel clenched his fists and looked as if he might burst.

‘No?’ Shrugging, Joscelin started to turn away.

‘Christ’s wounds, just get on with it!’ Montsorrel snarled.

Joscelin gave a sarcastic flourish and sauntered away to instruct his men to strip and reload his own sound wain.

Linnet de Montsorrel rejoined the women. Her stomach was queasy with fear. Everything had its price and she knew she would have to pay hers later when she and Giles were alone.

‘I’m cold, Mama,’ her son whimpered, and abandoned his nurse to cling to Linnet’s damp skirts.

She stooped to chafe his hands, noting with concern that his eyes were heavy and his complexion pale with exhaustion. ‘It won’t be long now, sweetheart,’ she comforted. She folded him beneath the protection of her cloak like a mother hen spreading her wing over a chick.

‘Madam, I know that man.’ Ella, her personal maid, jutted her chin towards the mercenary whom Linnet had just shamed into helping them. ‘It’s Joscelin de Gael, son of William Ironheart.’

‘Oh?’ Linnet knew of William Ironheart by reputation. They said he was so hard he pissed nails, that he was stubborn, embittered and dangerous to cross. Linnet studied his son. ‘How do you come to be acquainted with such a one?’

Ella blushed. ‘I only know him by sight, madam. He was at my sister’s wedding in the spring as a friend of the groom. They were both garrison soldiers at Nottingham Castle.’

Linnet assessed de Gael thoughtfully. She judged him to be in his late twenties. ‘What is he doing in the mercenary trade if he’s Ironheart’s son?’

‘He’s only Lord William’s bastard. His mother was a common camp-follower, so rumour says.’ Ella folded her arms, hugging her shawl against her body. ‘Apparently when de Gael’s mother died in childbed, Lord William went mad with grief and tried to kill himself, but his sword shattered and he was only wounded. After that, men started calling him Ironheart because his breast was stronger than the steel. I’d say Brokenheart was more appropriate.’ Ella’s gaze returned to their reluctant rescuer, who was now standing back from the wain, one hand on his sword-hilt, the other pushing his rain-soaked hair off his forehead.

Linnet, all romantic notions literally knocked out of her head by six years of marriage to Giles, said nothing, her feeling one of irritation rather than pity. She knew what it was like to be usurped by another woman in your own hall and how much that other woman’s status also depended on arrogant masculine whim.

Two panting men-at-arms struggled out of the broken wain carrying a large, ironbound chest between them.

‘Make haste!’ Giles snapped, and Linnet saw him scowl at de Gael, who was eyeing the chest with open speculation.

‘I see now the kind of weight you carry,’ de Gael remarked. ‘Small wonder that your wheel broke.’ In his own good time he withdrew his scrutiny and approached the women.

Linnet retreated behind downcast lids, knowing she would be the one to suffer if de Gael chose to take his impertinence further. Giles might think twice about assaulting a man of the mercenary’s undoubted ability, but no such restraint would prevent him from beating her. She heard the men puffing and swearing as their strongbox was manoeuvred into de Gael’s wain. Giles’s voice was querulous with impatience and bad temper, and inwardly she quailed.

De Gael crouched on his heels and gently peeled aside a wet fold of her cloak. ‘And who have we here?’ he asked.

‘My son, Robert.’ She flashed a rapid glance at her husband. He was still occupied in ranting at his guards but in a moment he would turn round.

De Gael did not miss her look. ‘You have a high courage, my lady,’ he murmured. ‘I won’t make it harder for you than it already is.’ Plucking the child from beneath her cloak, he swept him up in his arms. ‘Come, my young soldier, there’s a dry corner prepared especially for you in my cart.’

Linnet stretched her arms towards her son with an involuntary sound of protest. Robert peered at his mother over de Gael’s shoulder, his eyes wide with shock, but the move had been so sudden that he had no time to cry and by the time he belatedly found his voice, he was being placed on a dry blanket in the good wain with a lamb-skin rug tucked up to his chin.

Linnet, following hard on de Gael’s heels, found herself taken by the elbow and helped up beside her son. Robert stopped crying and began to knead the lamb’s wool like a nursing kitten. Linnet stroked his brow and looked at de Gael. ‘You have my gratitude,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

The mercenary shrugged. ‘No sense in keeping him out in that downpour when he can be warm in here. I expect your husband’s compensation to reflect my care of his goods.’ He started to withdraw. ‘There is room for your women, too, my lady. I’ll tell them, shall I?’

Rain pattered on the roof of the wain. She looked out through a canvas arch on a tableau of hazy green and brown. The smell of her wet garments clogged her nostrils. De Gael walked across to her maids. He moved with a wolf ’s ungainly elegance and she did not think that the similarity stopped there. And yet he had been considerate beyond the bounds of most men of her acquaintance.

Linnet eyed her husband and felt queasy at the sight of his fists clenched around his belt. She had tried to be a good wife to him but he was difficult to please and she dwelt in a constant state of trepidation, wondering from which angle of his nature the next small cruelty would come. He always found a scapegoat to blame; nothing was ever his fault, and in the household that scapegoat was usually her.

Behind her, at the other end of the wain, their soldiers were depositing the clothing coffers with much bumping and cursing. Robert’s eyelids drooped and closed. Linnet leaned her head against her son’s, her arm around him, and wearily shut her own eyes.

He returned her hug and smiled. ‘I’m here for the horse fair. I have to replace some war gear, and I need a new palfrey.’

‘I thought you’d be in France by now, doing the round of the tourneys.’ She handed his saturated cloak to a servant and drew him down the hall to the dais where there stood a wine flagon and some fine glazed cups. Filling one from the other, she watched him drink. He took four rapid, deep swallows, and then breathed out hard. His shoulders relaxed and his smile this time was less perfunctory.

‘Not this season. I’ve a contract to serve the justiciar until Michaelmas at least. He may send me and the men to Normandy to join the king but we’re more likely to be used for garrison duty.’ He refilled the cup and gazed around the hall. Two servants were lighting the candles and closing the shutters on a thickening but calm dusk. The rain had stopped an hour since and the sun had glimmered through the clouds in time to set. Another woman stirred a pot of soup over the central hearth and the smoke rising from the fire was savoury with the aroma of garlic and onions. There were some hangings on the wall he had not seen before and he noticed that his father had finally bought a new box chair for himself. The old one, through a combination of splinters and woodworm, had been lethal. The cups were new also. He recognized Maude’s taste in the cheerful horse-and-rider scenes painted in thick white slip on the red background.

‘It’s a bad business, the king’s own sons turning against him.’ Maude folded her arms beneath her ample bosom and clucked her tongue. ‘I’m old enough to remember how it was before Henry sat on the throne, and I never want to live through the like again. What was he thinking to have his eldest son anointed? Bound to give the boy ideas beyond himself.’

‘He already had ideas beyond himself before that, feckless whelp.’ Joscelin took another long swallow of wine and felt it glide smoothly down his throat with a slight after-sting in his nostrils. ‘When his father had him crowned he thought that by confirming the succession in so strong a manner he was creating stability. Little did he know.’ He shook his head. ‘I do not suppose he expected the discord to come from the very son he has anointed, but he was always going to store up trouble. The boy’s realized that for all the frippery and promises he’s no closer to power than he was as a swaddled infant. As far as his father’s concerned, he can be a king all he wants as long as it’s king of nothing. I’m inclined to agree.’ Grimacing, Joscelin twitched his shoulders. The rain had soaked through his cloak and there was an uncomfortable clamminess across the back of his neck. ‘At least it keeps me employed. What does my father say?’

‘The same as you, but he’s less polite.’

Joscelin’s hazel eyes brightened with amusement. ‘Where is the old wolf anyway? I’d have expected him to have bellowed my backside off by now.’

‘He’s dining with the justiciar.’

‘Is he now?’ Joscelin looked thoughtful as he sat down in his father’s new chair. Richard de Luci was the nominal ruler of England while the king was absent in Normandy. Fiercely loyal to Henry, he was a skilled administrator and warrior. Joscelin’s father and Richard de Luci were friends of long standing and similar interests, but their socializing was usually a matter of business as well as pleasure.

‘Apparently the Earl of Leicester and others are in London for the purpose of asking de Luci’s permission to leave England with troops and money for King Henry’s army.’ Maude ordered a servant to bring food.

Joscelin raised his brows. Robert of Leicester was self-seeking and arrogant, without an honest bone in his body. If he was going to war, it was to feather his own nest at the expense of weaker men. King Henry was certainly not weak - but his son was. ‘I saw some of that money today,’ he told his aunt. ‘Indeed, I helped bring it into the city. It was in the custody of one of young Henry’s lick-boots and if I have not walked in here with Giles de Montsorrel’s blood all over my hands, it is one of God’s miracles.’

Maude sat down beside him, leaned her elbows on the trestle and gave him her full attention as he told her about his encounter on the Clerkenwell road, his tone growing vehement with disgust as the tale progressed. ‘De Montsorrel looked at me as if he had a stink beneath his nose that he was too highbred to mention. I tell you, if it were not for the women and the little boy, I’d have struck him in the teeth and withdrawn my aid. You should have seen his men struggling with his strongbox. There was more in it than a few shillings to buy himself a couple of nags at Smithfield and trinkets for his wife.’

‘He’s lately come into an inheritance.’ Maude screwed up her face as she strove to remember. ‘His father died of a seizure at Eastertide, although he’d been having falling fits for almost a year.’

Joscelin nodded. ‘So I’d heard.’ He did not add that Raymond’s final seizure on Easter Sunday, immediately before Mass, had taken place between the thighs of a servant’s daughter at the moment of supreme pleasure. The incident had been the source of much ribald comment in alehouse and barracks. Giles de Montsorrel had either a family reputation to keep up or one he was never going to live down. That thought reminded him of his own half-brothers and he grimaced.

‘Are Ralf and Ivo here?’

A servant mounted the dais and set a steaming bowl of the soup before Joscelin, and a simnel loaf with a cross cut in the top.

‘I’m afraid they are.’ The pleated wrinkles around Maude’s mouth deepened. ‘Not that we often see them, the amount of time they spend carousing in the stews. Your father says they’re just sowing wild oats and that they’ll tire soon enough.’

‘But you are not as convinced.’

‘Would you be?’

Joscelin cut a chunk from the bread and dipped it into the soup. ‘You know how matters stand between my half-brothers and me,’ he said. ‘I’m the bastard, Ralf ’s the heir, and he rams it down my throat at every opportunity. ’ His expression was suddenly grim. ‘And Ivo’s like a sheep - follows Ralf ’s lead even if it happens to be off the edge of a cliff. Thank Christ I won’t be here much above a week.’

‘You’ve only just arrived!’ Maude protested.

‘I’ve a bad memory,’ he said ruefully. ‘It’s not until I come home that I remember the reasons why I left in the first place and by then it’s too late.’

Still panting, he raised his head and glowered at her. ‘God’s eyes, don’t you ever do anything but complain?’ He slid out of her and rolled to one side. She averted her eyes from his genitals and closed her aching thighs. Her neck was sore where he had bitten her.

‘Don’t just lie there, fetch me a clean tunic!’ he snapped. ‘I’ve a rendezvous at Leicester’s house tonight.’

Sitting up, Linnet drew on her chemise and went to the clothing pole. Crumpled on the floor were his discarded shirt and tunic, the latter torn in his haste to bed her. He would expect it mended by morning but at least if he was going out she had some time to herself.

‘If you don’t like it, you should hurry up and quicken with a babe,’ Giles growled as he snatched the fresh garments from her hands. ‘The only child you’ve borne to me in six years of marriage is that milksop weakling out there and you know what I think about him!’

Swallowing, Linnet turned away to fetch his belt. Bearing Robert had almost killed her, for she had not reached her full growth then and her hips had still been narrow. Giles had told the midwives to save the infant - he could always take another wife and what use was a bad breeder anyway? But she had survived and one of the midwives had advised her how to avoid quickening again too soon. It involved vinegar douches and small pieces of trimmed sponge or moss soaked in the same. Of late she had stopped using them in the hopes of conceiving again but thus far there had been no interruption to her monthly bleeds.

Giles donned his braies and tied the drawstring. ‘You think I enjoy ploughing a corpse?’ He flayed her with a look. ‘I might as well spread the legs of an effigy for all the response I get from you!’

She risked a single frightened glance at his lean, tense frame, then looked at the floor. When he touched her, she did indeed wish to be dead or turned to stone.

‘Mayhap you dream elsewhere,’ he said as he plunged into his shirt and tunic. ‘You must know that I was displeased with your boldness this afternoon.’

‘I’m sorry, my lord; I was only thinking of Robert’s welfare.’

‘Were you indeed? I saw the way de Gael looked at you after you spoke to him. A man of his ilk needs little encouragement.’

‘I swear I gave him none, my lord.’ Cold fear rippled up Linnet’s spine. She knew what he was capable of when riled. ‘On my soul I swear it.’

Giles snatched the belt out of her hands and she flinched. ‘On your soul?’ he enquired softly. ‘Shall we not say rather “on your hide”?’ He ran the learner through his fingers until they stopped against the dragon’s-head buckle.

‘On my hide, I swear it,’ Linnet said, looking at the intricate curlicues of English workmanship on the cold, solid bronze and knowing how much their impact hurt. ‘I swear it.’

Giles drew out the moment, letting her suffer. ‘I might have trusted you once,’ he said huskily and a shadow of pain tensed the corners of his eyes. ‘Then I discovered that any bitch in heat will run to be serviced by the nearest dog!’ He jerked the belt around his lean waist and latched the buckle. ‘If you give me cause to reprimand you again, you know the consequences.’

Linnet lowered her eyes and stared at the floor. She could see his legs, the right one thrusting belligerently forward, encased in soft red leather. ‘Yes, my lord,’ she whispered, feeling cold and sick.

He pivoted on his heel and headed to the door. ‘Hurry up and get dressed, you’ve a household to order. Make yourself useful for something at least!’ He flung out the door and she heard him descend the stairs, yelling at one of his squires to summon a boatman to row him downriver to Leicester’s house.

After a moment Linnet gathered herself sufficiently to take a comb from her coffer to tidy her hair. She did not want to summon her maid; she needed a moment of solitude to compose herself, to fix in position the calm facade she would present to her household. Hair smoothed, she picked up a small clay jar of marigold salve to anoint the mark on her throat.

It was not the first time that Giles had bitten her, nor the most painful, but as she broke the beeswax seal and took a daub of ointment on her fingertip, her eyes stung with tears. Jesu, how she hated being at his mercy, trapped like a fly in a web.

Vision blurring, she sat down on the strongbox, which stood beside Giles’s clothing chest. The studs on the iron reinforcing bands dug into the backs of her thighs, which were still tender from the grip of his fingers. Beneath the strongbox’s twin locks lay the coin from the sale of their entire wool clip and all the rents and toll monies from their villages. So did all the silver plate from the keep at Rushcliffe. The latter was part of her dowry and Giles had no right to bestow it upon Robert of Leicester for some dubious scheme in Normandy. Giles needed this coin to keep the moneylenders at bay. Promises did not put bread on the board and her husband had already taxed the villagers to the limit of their means. If there was a bad harvest this year, some of their people would starve for the cause of an adolescent youth with delusions of grandeur.

Giles was supposedly accompanying Leicester across the Narrow Sea to offer support to King Henry’s efforts to crush his rebellious sons, but Linnet suspected that treachery was intended. Giles disliked the controls that King Henry had imposed on baronial rights and would certainly not beggar himself to go to the King’s aid. To her husband, the prospect of an untried youth on the throne held endless possibilities, especially for the men who helped to place him there. It was a gamble, it was treason, and she had never seen Giles so excited - irritable and exhilarated at the same time. And it was she who bore the brunt of his mood swings.

Rising from the coffer, Linnet wiped away her tears on the heel of her hand. They were a release, nothing more. Giles was not softened by them and she would have dismissed them from her armoury long ago had she not discovered that others were less impervious to their effect.

She set her jaw and summoned Ella with a stony composure that did not falter even when the woman’s eyes flickered over the ugly, blood-filled bruise on her neck with knowing, unspoken pity.

‘You’ll be wanting warm water and a towel first,’ Ella said practically and went to fetch them.

Linnet lit a taper from the night candle and crossed the room to the small, portable screen at the end. Behind it, exhausted by the long, fraught journey, her son slept in his small truckle bed. Against the pillow, his hair stood up in waifish blond spikes. He was fine-boned and fragile, light as thistledown, and she loved him with a fierce and guilty desperation. Frail children so often died in infancy and she would find herself watching him intently, waiting for the first cough or sneeze or sign of fever to have him swaddled up and dosed with all manner of nostrums. And if he did live to adulthood, what kind of man would he make? Never such a one as his father, she vowed, although God alone knew the ways in which he would be twisted when he left the safety of her skirts for the masculine world beyond the bower.

‘Never,’ she vowed, hand cupped around the candle flame, protecting her child from the hot drip of the wax. If only it were as easy to protect him from his future.

William de Rocher, nicknamed Ironheart, stroked his chin. In his youth his hawkish features had been striking but advancing age and the effects of a life hard-lived had imbued his visage with an unsettling cadaverous quality.

‘You mean about Queen Eleanor being caught defecting to Paris disguised as a man, to join her sons in rebellion? Nothing would surprise me about that wanton.’ He cast a dark look at his own wife. Dumpy and plain, she sat like a lump of proving dough beside de Luci’s elegant wife. At least Agnes knew her place, and if she ever approached the borderline of his tolerance, a bellow and a raised fist sent her scuttling back to her corner with downcast eyes and a trembling mouth. But some women, brought up without benefit of discipline, were wont to snarl and bite the hand that fed them. ‘I trust she’s well under lock and key now?’

‘Indeed so, but it doesn’t make the rebellion any less dangerous.’

Ironheart grunted and considered de Luci from beneath untidy silver brows. ‘I hear the Earl of Leicester has approached you for permission to cross to Normandy and offer his support to the king. Rumour has it, too, that he has amassed no small amount of treasure to fund his expedition.’

De Luci stared at him, then laughed and shook his head. ‘I swear to God, William, you know more than I do half the time!’

‘I listen at the right keyholes,’ Ironheart replied with a dour grin. ‘Besides, Leicester’s not exactly been making a secret of the fact, has he?’

‘You’ve never approved of Robert of Leicester, have you?’

The grin faded. ‘His father was as solid as granite; you could trust him with your life, but I wouldn’t trust his heir further than I could hurl a fistful of fluff. And, before you ask, I’ve no evidence to prove him unworthy. It’s a feeling inside here, a soldier’s gut.’ He struck the area between heart and belt.

‘Then it’s not jealousy because your sons spend more time in his company than they do in yours?’

Ironheart looked insulted. ‘Why should I be jealous?’ he scoffed. ‘I am their father, he is just a turd clad in cloth of gold. Let them have their flirtation. Once they’ve unwrapped Earl Robert’s bindings, they’ll back away.’

De Luci pursed his lips, not so sure. ‘I’m willing to give Leicester a chance,’ he said and, with a rueful smile, patted his own paunch. ‘A diplomat’s gut, William.’

Ironheart snorted rudely and held out his wine cup to be refilled. ‘I know which I’d rather trust.’

De Luci chose to ignore the remark and changed the direction of the conversation. ‘Did you know I’d commissioned Joscelin for the rest of the summer?’

‘No, but I thought you might, the situation being what it is.’

‘If the opportunity arises, I’d like to give him more responsibility - perhaps a seneschal’s post. He’s proven hi. . .